by Edna Ferber
He cast about in his alert mind, and made his plans craftily, and put them warily, for he knew the force of Parthenia’s opposition.
“I see here where old Ollie Pegram’s fixing to sell his show boat.” He was seated in the kitchen, smoking his pipe and reading the local newspaper. “Cotton Blossom, she’s called.”
Parthy Ann was not one to simulate interest where she felt none. Bustling between stove and pantry she only half heard him. “Well, what of it?”
Captain Andy rattled the sheet he was holding, turned a page leisurely, meanwhile idly swinging one leg, as he sat with knees crossed. Each movement was calculated to give the effect of casualness.
“Made a fortune in the show-boat business, Ollie has. Ain’t a town on the river doesn’t wait for the Cotton Blossom. Yessir. Anybody buys that outfit is walking into money.”
“Scallywags.” Thus, succinctly, Parthenia thought to dismiss the subject while voicing her opinion of water thespians.
“Scallywags nothing! Some of the finest men on the river in the show-boat business. Look at Pegram! Look at Finnegan! Look at Hosey Watts!”
It was Mrs. Hawks’ habit to express contempt by reference to a ten-foot pole, this being an imaginary implement of disdain and a weapon of defence which was her Excalibur. She now announced that not only would she decline to look at the above-named gentlemen, but that she could not be induced to touch any of them with a ten-foot pole. She concluded with the repetitious “Scallywags!” and evidently considered the subject closed.
Two days later, the first pang of suspicion darted through her when Andy renewed the topic with an assumption of nonchalance that failed to deceive her this time. It was plain to this astute woman that he had been thinking concentratedly about show boats since their last brief conversation. It was at supper. Andy should have enjoyed his home-cooked meals more than he actually did. They always were hot, punctual, palatable. Parthenia had kept her cooking hand. Yet he often ate abstractedly and unappreciatively. Perhaps he missed the ceremony, the animation, the sociability that marked the meal hours in the dining saloon of the Creole Belle. The Latin in him, and the unconsciously theatrical in him, loved the mental picture of himself in his blue coat with brass buttons and gold braid, seated at the head of the long table while the alpacas twittered, “Do you think so, Captain Hawks?” and the Prince Alberts deferred to him with, “What’s your opinion, sir?” and the soft-spoken black stewards in crackling white jackets bent over him with steaming platters and tureens.
Parthenia did not hold with conversation at meal time. Andy and Magnolia usually carried on such talk as occurred at table. Strangely enough, there was in his tone toward the child none of the usual patronizing attitude of the adult. No what-did-you-learn-at-school; no have-you-been-a-good-girl-to-day. They conversed like two somewhat rowdy grown-ups, constantly chafed by the reprovals of the prim Parthenia. It was a habit of Andy seldom to remain seated in his chair throughout a meal. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he frequently was called away from table while in command of his steamer. At home his jumpiness was a source of great irritation to Mrs. Hawks. Her contributions to the conversation varied little.
“Pity’s sake, Hawks, sit still! That’s the third time you’ve been up and down, and supper not five minutes on the table.… Eat your potato, Magnolia, or not a bite of cup cake do you get.… That’s a fine story to be telling a child, I must say, Andy Hawks.… Can’t you talk of anything but a lot of good-for-nothing drunken river roustabouts!… Drink your milk, Maggie.… Oh, stop fidgeting, Hawks!… Don’t cut away all the fat like that, Magnolia. No wonder you’re so skinny I’m ashamed of you and the neighbours think you don’t get enough to eat.”
Like a swarm of maddening mosquitoes, these admonitions buzzed through and above and around the conversation of the man and the child.
To-night Andy’s talk dwelt on a dramatic incident that had been told him that day by the pilot of the show boat New Sensation, lately burned to the water’s edge. He went on vivaciously, his bright brown eyes sparkling with interest and animation. Now and then, he jumped up from the table the better to illustrate a situation. Magnolia was following his every word and gesture with spellbound attention. She never had been permitted to see a show-boat performance. When one of these gay water travellers came prancing down the river, band playing, calliope tooting, flags flying, towboat puffing, bringing up with a final flare and flourish at the landing, there to tie up for two or three days, or even, sometimes, for a week, Magnolia was admonished not to go near it. Other children of the town might swarm over it by day, enchanted by its mystery, enthralled by its red-coated musicians when the band marched up the main street; might even, at night, witness the performance of a play and actually stay for the song-and-dance numbers which comprised the “concert” held after the play, and for which an additional charge of fifteen cents was made.
Magnolia hungered for a glimpse of these forbidden delights. The little white house at Thebes commanded a view up the river toward Cape Girardeau. At night from her bedroom window she could see the lights shining golden yellow through the boat’s many windows, was fired with excitement at sight of the kerosene flares stuck in the river bank to light the way of the lucky, could actually hear the beat and blare of the band. Again and again, in her very early childhood, the spring nights when the show boats were headed downstream and the autumn nights when they were returning up river were stamped indelibly on her mind as she knelt in her nightgown at the little window of the dark room that faced the river with its dazzling and forbidden spectacle. Her bare feet would be as icy as her cheeks were hot. Her ears were straining to catch the jaunty strains of the music, and her eyes tried to discern the faces that passed under the weird glow of the torch flares. Usually she did not hear the approaching tread of discovery until the metallic, “Magnolia Hawks, get into your bed this very minute!” smote cruelly on her entranced ears. Sometimes she glimpsed men and women of the show-boat troupe on Front Street or Third Street, idling or shopping. Occasionally you saw them driving in a rig hired from Deffler’s Livery Stable. They were known to the townspeople as Show Folks, and the term carried with it the sting of opprobrium. You could mark them by something different in their dress, in their faces, in the way they walked. The women were not always young. Magnolia noticed that often they were actually older than her mother (Parthy was then about thirty-nine). Yet they looked lively and somehow youthful, though their faces bore wrinkles. There was about them a certain care-free gaiety, a jauntiness. They looked, Magnolia decided, as if they had just come from some interesting place and were going to another even more interesting. This was rather shrewd of her. She had sensed that the dulness of village and farm life, the look that routine, drudgery, and boredom stamp indelibly on the countenance of the farm woman or the village housewife, were absent in these animated and often odd faces. Once she had encountered a little group of three—two women and a man—strolling along the narrow plank sidewalk near the Hawks house. They were eating fruit out of a bag, sociably, and spitting out the seeds, and laughing and chatting and dawdling. One of the women was young and very pretty, and her dress, Magnolia thought, was the loveliest she had ever seen. Its skirt of navy blue was kilted in the back, and there were puffs up each side edged with passementerie. On her head, at a saucy angle, was a chip bonnet of blue, trimmed with beaded lace, and ribbon, and adorable pink roses. The other woman was much older. There were queer deep lines in her face—not wrinkles, though Magnolia could not know this, but the scars left when the gashes of experience have healed. Her eyes were deep, and dark, and dead. She was carelessly dressed, and the box pleated tail of her flounced black gown trailed in the street, so that it was filmed with a gray coating of dust. The veil wound round her bonnet hung down her back, imparting a Spanish and mysterious look. The man, too, though young and tall and not bad-looking, wore an unkempt look. His garments were ill assorted. His collar boasted no cravat. But all three had a charming air of insouciance as they
strolled up the tree-shaded village street, laughing and chatting and munching and spitting out cherry stones with a little childish ballooning of the cheeks. Magnolia hung on the Hawks fence gate and stared. The older woman caught her eye and smiled, and immediately Magnolia decided that she liked her better than she did the pretty, young one, so after a moment’s grave inspection she smiled in return her sudden, brilliant wide smile.
“Look at that child,” said the older woman. “All of a sudden she’s beautiful.”
The other two surveyed her idly. Magnolia’s smile had vanished now. They saw a scrawny sallow little girl, big-eyed, whose jaw conformation was too plainly marked, whose forehead was too high and broad, and whose black hair deceived no one into believing that its dank curls were other than tortured.
“You’re crazy, Julie,” remarked the pretty girl, without heat; and looked away, uninterested.
But between Magnolia and the older woman a filament of live liking had leaped. “Hello, little girl,” said the older woman.
Magnolia continued to stare, gravely; said nothing.
“Won’t you say hello to me?” the woman persisted; and smiled again. And again Magnolia returned her smile. “There!” the woman exclaimed, in triumph. “What did I tell you!”
“Cat’s got her tongue,” the sloppy young man remarked as his contribution to the conversation.
“Oh, come on,” said the pretty girl; and popped another cherry into her mouth.
But the woman persisted. She addressed Magnolia gravely. “When you grow up, don’t smile too often; but smile whenever you want anything very much, or like any one, or want them to like you. But I guess maybe you’ll learn that without my telling you.… Listen, won’t you say hello to me? H’m?”
Magnolia melted. “I’m not allowed,” she explained.
“Not——? Why not? Pity’s sake!”
“Because you’re show-boat folks. My mama won’t let me talk to show-boat folks.”
“Damned little brat,” said the pretty girl, and spat out a cherry stone. The man laughed.
With a lightning gesture the older woman took off her hat, stuffed it under the man’s arm, twisted her abundant hair into a knob off her face, pulled down her mouth and made a narrow line of her lips, brought her elbows sharply to her side, her hands clasped, her shoulders suddenly pinched.
“Your mama looks like this,” she said.
“Why, how did you know!” cried Magnolia, amazed. The three burst into sudden loud laughter. And at that Parthy Hawks appeared at the door, bristling, protective.
“Maggie Hawks, come into the house this minute!”
The laughter of the three then was redoubled. The quiet little village street rang with it as they continued their leisurely care-free ramble up the sun-dappled leafy path.
Now her father, at supper, had a tale to tell of these forbidden fascinators. The story had been told him that afternoon by Hard Harry Swager, river pilot, just in at the landing after a thrilling experience.
“Seems they were playing at China Grove, on the Chappelia. Yessir. Well, this girl—La Verne, her name was, or something—anyway, she was on the stage singing, he says. It was the concert, after the show. She comes off and the next thing you know there’s a little blaze in the flies. Next minute she was afire and no saving her.” To one less initiated it might have been difficult to differentiate in his use of the pronoun, third person, feminine. Sometimes he referred to the girl, sometimes to the boat. “Thirty years old if she’s a day and burns like greased paper. Went up in ten minutes. Hard Harry goes running to the pilot house to get his clothes. Time he reaches the boiler deck, fire has cut off the gangway. He tries to lower himself twelve feet from the boiler deck to the main, and falls and breaks his leg. By that time they were cutting the tow-boat away from the Sensation to save her. Did save her, too, finally. But the Sensation don’t last long’s it takes to tell it. Well, there he was, and what did they have to do but send four miles inland for a doctor, and when he comes, the skunk, guess what?”
“What!” cries Magnolia not merely to be obliging in this dramatic crisis, but because she is frantic to know. Captain Andy is on his feet by this time, fork in hand.
“When the doc comes he takes a look around, and there they all are in any kind of clothes they could grab or had on. So he says he won’t set the leg unless he’s paid in advance, twenty-five dollars. ‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you!’ says Hard Harry, laying there with his broken leg. And draws. ‘You’ll set it or I’ll shoot yours off so you won’t ever walk again, you son of a bitch!’ ”
“Captain Andy Hawks!”
He has acted it out. The fork is his gun. Magnolia is breathless. Now both gaze, stricken, at Mrs. Hawks. Their horror is not occasioned by the word spoken but by the interruption.
“Go on!” shouts Magnolia; and bounces up and down in her chair. “Go on! “
But the first fine histrionic flavour has been poisoned by that interruption. Andy takes his seat at table. He resumes the eating of his pork steak and potatoes, but listlessly. Perhaps he is a little ashamed of the extent to which he has been carried away by his own recital. “Slipped out,” he mumbled.
“Well, I should say as much!” Parthy retorted, ambiguously. “What kind of language can a body expect, you hanging around show-boat riff-raff.”
Magnolia would not be cheated of her dénouement. “But did he? Did he shoot it off, or did he fix it, or what? What did he do?”
“He set it, all right. They gave him his twenty-five and told him to get the h——to get out of there, and he got. But they had to get the boat out—the towboat they’d saved—and no pilot but Hard Harry. So next day they put him on the hurricane deck, under a tarpaulin because the rain was pouring the way it does down there worse than any place in the world, just about. And with two men steering, he brings the boat to Baton Rouge seventy-five miles through bayou and Mississippi. Yessir.”
Magnolia breathed again.
“And who’s this,” demanded Mrs. Hawks, “was telling you all this fol-de-rol, did you say?”
“Swager himself. Harry. Hard Harry Swager, they call him.” (You could see the ten-foot pole leap of itself into Mrs. Hawks’ hand as her fingers drummed the tablecloth.) “I was talking to him to-day. Here of late he’s been with the New Sensation. He piloted the Cotton Blossom for years till Pegram decided to quit. Well, sir! He says five hundred people a night on the show boat was nothing, and eight hundred on Saturday nights in towns with a good back-country. Let me tell you right here and now that runs into money. Say a quarter of ’em’s fifty centers, a half thirty-five, and the rest twenty-five. The niggers all twenty-five up in the gallery, course. Naught … five times five’s … five and carry the two … five times two’s ten carry the one … five …”
Parthy was no fool. She sensed that here threatened a situation demanding measures even more than ordinarily firm.
“I may not know much”—another form of locution often favoured by her. The tone in which it was spoken utterly belied the words; the tone told you that not only did she know much, but all. “I may not know much, but this I do know. You’ve got something better to do with your time than loafing down at the landing like a river rat with that scamp Swager. Hard Harry! He comes honestly enough by that name, I’ll be bound, if he never came honestly by anything else in his life. And before the child, too. Show boats! And language!”
“What’s wrong with show boats?”
“Everything, and more, too. A lot of loose-living worthless scallywags, men and women. Scum, that’s what. Trollops!” Parthy could use a good old Anglo-Saxon word herself, on occasion.
Captain Andy made frantic foray among the whiskers. He clawed like a furious little monkey—always the sign of mental disturbance in him. “No more scum than your own husband, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. I used to be with a show-boat troupe myself.”
“Pilot, yes.”
“Pilot be damned.” He was up now and capering like a Quilp. “Actor, Mrs. Hawks, an
d pretty good I was, too, time I was seventeen or eighteen. You ought to’ve seen me in the after-piece. Red Hot Coffee it was called. I played the nigger. Doubled in brass, too. I pounded the bass drum in the band, and it was bigger than me.”
Magnolia was enchanted. She sprang up, flew round to him. “Were you really? An actor? You never told me. Mama, did you know? Did you know Papa was an actor on a show boat?”
Parthy Ann rose in her wrath. Always taller than her husband, she seemed now to tower above him. He defied her, a terrier facing a mastiff.
“What kind of talk is this, Andy Hawks! If you’re making up tales to tease me before the child I’m surprised at you, that thought nothing you could do would ever surprise me again.”
“It’s the truth. The Sunny South, she was called. Captain Jake Bofinger, owner. Married ten times, old Jake was. A pretty rough lot we were in those days, let me tell you. I remember time we——”
“Not another word, Captain Hawks. And let me tell you it’s a good thing for you that you kept it from me all these years. I’d never have married you if I’d known. A show-boat actor!”
“Oh, yes, you would, Parthy. And glad of the chance.”
Words. Bickering. Recriminations. Finally, “I’ll thank you not to mention show boats again in front of the child. You with your La Vernes and your Hard Harrys and your concerts and broken legs and fires and ten wives and language and what not! I don’t want to be dirtied by it, nor the child.… Run out and play, Magnolia.… And let this be the last of show-boat talk in this house.”
Andy breathed deep, clung with both hands to his whiskers, and took the plunge. “It’s far from being the last of it, Parthy. I’ve bought the Cotton Blossom from Pegram.”
